Windows 8 May Let You Play Xbox 360 Games
Insideris reports that one of the more intriguing functions of the upcoming Microsoft Windows 8 is the ability to play Xbox 360 games on PC. Though there is no real concrete confirmation of the rumor from Microsoft, its plausibility is reassuring.
The future Windows 8 will allow players to play Xbox 360 games on the PC through their Xbox Live accounts. Microsoft has already been promoting their Live features and have shown interest in developing an OS that operates in a similar way. Of course the addition of the PC version of Xbox Live and Games for Windows in Xbox.com can also be considered a hint of this move.
According to the unnamed, unknown sources, Xbox 360 on PC will be activated by a subscription fee, similar to Xbox Live. Online gaming will be using Windows Live Marketplace, but PC games won’t be able to compete against console users due to differences such as controller vs. mouse and keyboard, et-cetra.
Microsoft has always shown interest in the concept of taking your games anywhere you go, and this could perhaps be the practical move that would be the implementation of the statement. However, the more plausible reason is to extend the lifespan of the Xbox 360. The Xbox 720 (unofficial name) is set to be launched in a few years, so perhaps Microsoft wishes its Xbox 360 console to stay active for at least a few more years.
Either way, it sounds like an interesting idea, as this will really open quite a few doors for PC gamers, even though the console isn’t very popular among them. Nevertheless, the idea of playing a game on your Xbox 360, saving and then continuing on your PC when the console just isn’t reachable is an intriguing idea – if it’s true of course.
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this would be very cool, except for the subscription fee to play 360 games. very lame. Kind of understandable if it’s for online play (as xbox live gold players have to pay for online play), but still unacceptable to charge for internet play.
If they make it close to what XBLA is, subscription fee won’t hurt.
If pc users and Xbox users could play then the PC users would win everytime with the mouse! This is a good idea in theory as PC users will stick with xbox over ps3
I doubt this… No matter how much I’d love it to be true. 360 games were built to use specific hardware. Unless Microsoft has created a Emulator platform that can leverage it I’ll believe it too good to be true.
My question is if this is true will your PC be able to boost the visuals of 360 games? It’s not likely, but it would be nice to be able to use your PCs GPU to throw in some AA.
May be they allow it
you never know. But I think it would be more like using the remaining processing power of GPU and CPU to emulate the 360 games rather than using this raw power to make them HD.
360 can do up to 4x MSAA as it is. Modern GPUs can do different kinds of AA, but they’re no less complex than MSAA and in any case there’s not really a way to just switch on AA in a way that would actually work for a game – it has to be made for that game. Especially with deferred shading engines (there are plenty out there today, notable exception being Unreal), setting up MSAA isn’t trivial. AA in CryEngine 3 isn’t even a single technique, they use different AA approaches depending on the distance of the geometry.
I don’t think the PC versions would look any better unless they were modified to look better on PC. An emulator won’t be able to do it for them.
I doubt it… they will probably just port some 360 games to pc and charge retail price for them on demand. They’ll change the games for windows live name to xbox live. They’ll advertise xbox on windows 8 then people will buy it and get confused when they put a xbox disc in the computer and it doesn’t work..
I’m in phone support and when windows phone 7 came out with “xbox live built in” I had about 5 calls a day with people asking how to play xbox games on their phone. We had a guy come in to train us on it and he was telling people they could play xbox 360 games on their phone. When people kept asking how they told us they don’t know but he thought it would have something to do with streaming.
I kept trying to argue even if it was possible the phone is touch screen. The xbox has like 8 buttons, a dpad and two analog sticks. You wouldn’t be able to see wtf you were doing if they mapped all those buttons to a 4 inch touch screen.
There are probably still older ladies at my work that thing you can still play xbox 360 games on the phones.
this will never happen someone will come up with a private server to avoid Windows/Xbox Live fee and piracy would go rampant
also keyboard/mouse vs controller is a bullshit argument considering consoles today have USB ports
I think that when u play on the pc and want to play with xbox players online u should be able to like connect a xbox controller and that the comp verifies it and allowing to play with xbox users so long u have the 360 controller in =D